Page 13 of The Sainted Duchess
“You are going to teach me in five days what other women appear to have known since infancy?”
“No. I am going to pretend you have always known it and insist you act accordingly until everyone believes me. It is faster.”
“I do not like being ordered,” she said, feeling her heart beat faster.
“I do not like being trapped in my own bedchamber,” he returned evenly. “The week will be full of annoyances for both of us.”
“I will do as I choose,” she said.
“You will do as I ask or we will marry on Tuesday and spend the rest of our lives discovering just how contrary you can be,” he said. He released her wrist, then, as if the point did not require holding her to make it.
“You are very sure of your own talents, Your Grace.”
“I am,” he said simply. “It is one of my worst qualities.”
“And if your talents fail,” she pressed, “you will… marry me.”
“Yes.”
“How can you say that without flinching?” she whispered. “How can you bind yourself like that?”
He looked at her for a long moment.
“Because somebody else did not keep his word once,” he said, so quietly she almost missed it. “And because I have no intention of failing.”
She hardly knew what to say. " Thank you" was too small; "don’t bother" was an insult to a gift he had not had to offer. She settled for a nod.
“Very well. Two instructions before I let you go.”
“Two?” she asked, suspicious already.
“First: sleep. You will be useless to me if you stagger about all day without having rested well. Second: tomorrow, you will go nowhere alone. If a gentleman you do not know smiles at you, you will not smile back unless I am within fifteen feet.”
“That is absurd,” she said.
“Correct,” he agreed, untroubled. “But it will amuse them long enough for me to arrive. Until I have rebuilt your instincts, you may borrow mine.”
“You are a very arrogant man.”
“Yes,” he said cheerfully. “But I am your arrogant man for seven days.”
The sentence startled a breath out of her. She smoothed her skirts, then stopped.
“Tomorrow, then.”
“Yes, tomorrow, we begin. If you are late, you will stand on the hearth rug and recite to me from memory the names of ten novels you like.”
“I…” She nearly confessed that she had not been permitted novels where she came from. She did not confess it. “I shall not be late.”
“Good.” His eyes warmed. “Go.”
She went.
What did I walk myself into?
CHAPTER 4
Ishould focus on breakfast, surely.But all Maria could think of was the conversation that she had had with Violet the night before.
